Scott McTominay responds to Roy Keane & Gary Neville criticism after Manchester derby defeat
By Tom Gott
Manchester United midfielder Scott McTominay has admitted he is disappointed with the reactions from Roy Keane and Gary Neville towards the team's performance in Sunday's Manchester derby.
United were comprehensively thumped 4-1 by neighbours Manchester City, after which Keane accused the Red Devils of simply 'giving up'. Neville took a similar viewpoint and described the performance as 'embarrassing'.
The comments were put to McTominay after the game by Sky Sports, and the Scotland midfielder admitted United were not good enough.
"From my point of view, on the pitch, it's hard to see what's going on around you but if that's what people are saying then so be it," he said.
"They're all entitled to their own opinion but, for myself, it's incredibly disappointing if people think that.
"I'll have to watch it back and see body language and things like that but, for myself, it hurts. If you give a team like that all the time in the world in the second half, you're gonna get punished. It's as simple as that."
Club captain Harry Maguire also acknowledged that United let their performance levels dip too much in the second half.
"We had good belief at half-time," he said. "We played the first half well, like I say, it was probably a 50-50 game in terms of both teams playing aggressive, both teams playing on the front foot.
"But the difference was, when we won the ball back off them in the first half, we were clean, we were good in transitions, we got on the counter-attack, we punished them a lot of times with finding good balls out wide and we kept the ball in their half.
"The second half comes and any time they put us under pressure we gave away the ball far too easily. It enabled them to control the game through possession and it made it difficult for ourselves to get up the pitch, and obviously they did what they do in terms of keeping the ball and they did that well in the second half. For me the most important thing is that we’ve got to look after the ball better."